tired

FOMC minutes were supposed to be released today at 2pm, so i took it easy in the morning, figuring nothing big would happen...wrong...when i checked in the afternoon, most of my stocks had gapped up big then faded downwards, except for Aapl, which opened at 176 and stabilized at 178. this was a disaster for my only open position, aapl may 180 puts bought at 171. yesterday it had gapped up to 175, which was still okay, i figured fluctuation and it might get down to 172, but this solid move, meant serious losses for me. luckily the market tanked after the FOMC release, mainly because it had ran up too much too fast. aapl tanked 4 bucks in 20 minutes. i didn't quite catch the absolute bottom (173), but i was able to offload them at 174. 3K loss, sigh! in a twist of fate, i had bought aapl puts before the meeting, figuring it was too high, however i sold them in the volatility after the release, not imagining such a big fall.
now for some milk and banana nut cake, courtesy of my Mom.

action day

new desktop background :)

i got to my laptop at 9:50am and straight away i noticed i had missed the drop in Aapl. i had bought puts at 171 yesterday and it had gone up to 173. i was hopping to catch the drop...would have sold straight away, but by 9:50 it was at 173. sigh!

i sold all my Nue puts for nice profits. YAY me :) i then watched tv and slept some more.

around 2:30pm i was watching the tape again and aapl was totally pissing me off. it just kept going up and up, no news, very unusual action for the stock. i felt it was near it's top, i watched intently, i swooped in like a hawk, i held through the drops, waited till the close...10 cents...20 cents...every differential counts...sold for a profit. but, still a huge unrealized loss on the remaining puts. grrr !

monsanto died spectacularly today...why? i was watching cnbc / fast money and saw that oil was down big, the end of commodities, maybe ag's going down on that...it's on my watch list now.

i need cigarettes. oh my rotting teeth, grin :)

keep your personal life in shape

i was not on point in my personal life and some of it affected my trading today. this is something you have to try and control as much as possible. i woke up on time and got rid of the Monsanto (MON) puts within a reasonable period of time. i left some on the table, but it was a risky trade and i am happy with the profits we :) booked. i sold off the NFLX puts for par, although it went down later. it was a good trade overall, because if it's not going anywhere or in the direction you believe it should, get liquid. better to be even than at a loss. plenty of fish (trades) to be caught in the sea.

i thought the market would go down for the day and bought some Aapl puts, but it went up $3 from where i bought it and it was a terrible buy, although i really liked the level at which i bought. NUE went up like insane and my $80 puts are doing terrible. they are nearly 1.5 in the negative and i have 20 of those. i still could not understand why nue was going up so strongly, so i shorted it some more. maybe i was overzealous :) i found out after close that US Steel (X) is reporting tomorrow. that was the reason for the rise. that's good for me actually, because if X disappoints, nue tanks, if they are good, even so the upside pull for nue will be limited i think. basically, what i am saying is, this stock is up on speculation. i was worried there might be some real news that i missed.

deutsche bank (DB) reports tomorrow. my sister works for them, although i think they will disappoint big time. lots of earnings this week, plus GDP and FOMC rate cute news. dangerous week, i like it calm and quiet.

i read articles, researched stocks and earnings for like 3 hours, so now it's time to eat food and watch tv.

shoot me

i was going to title this post, "i commit suicide", but my parents occasionally read my blog...first a little background, i have been trying to quit smoking since yesterday and i woke up early and the last couple of days i have spent all day watching the tape. as you can see i made a ton of trades, with well over $100 in commissions (which is another story altogether). basically, i suck when i watch the market all day. somehow, my judgement fades away and i buy and sell arbitrarily, hoping now it will go up or down. basically, time is my enemy. so, a combination of that and smoking jitters, caused today's disaster.

now, on to the disaster.

i got rid of my STLD calls at the open. good trade. i reshorted NFLX at a better price and sold for a small bump. good trade. i should have liquidated my entire position as the one i had bought yesterday, didn't seem to be working, but i didn't listen to my gut. then i FUCKED up big time and sorry to my readers there is no other way to put it. i started selling my BNI puts at good prices, but instead of putting 11.3 in the sell field, i put in 10.6, which was the lower portion of the spread and had stuck in my head. as soon and i mean microseconds after i clicked transmit i thought "Shit" and it was gone. u have to understand whoever i sold to made $400 instantly, absolutely no risk. well that blew my entire profit and handed me a $-100 loss on that position.

i decided to compound that error by buying Monsanto (MON) puts over the next hour and then praying for the rest of the afternoon that it go down. Did it go down ? Ofcourse not, i got to enjoy watching it go up. Why so strong ? People are starving man. Bounce play. God hates me. Pick your reason. Now i have a huge short position on a stock which is going strong and it's the weekend, meaning tons of bad news can come out. Like, all of Asia bans food exports. That would be the end of me. I also bought some NUE puts, because it was flying too high and if you are going to commit suicide you should go all out.
i am not kidding, almost everytime i have lost big it has been with a pattern like this. you only need to slip up once kids.

DO NOT WORRY, part of this pessimism is nicotine withdrawl. let's keep our fingers crossed and now to get drunk.

i work hard

as you may know i screwed up yesterday and sold short 20 NUE puts. Yikes !! needless to say i was up early and ready for the opening bell. I did not think Nue had upward strength and even more importantly i did not like the amount of risk i had in the position. i thought about various price levels, the losses associated and what i was willing to do. it opened and i must have been half asleep, because i sold at the Ask price, which is the upper limit of price offered. I didn't haggle. must have been confused, i mean i was short a short...Huh :) Luckily, that was a very good move, because unbeknowst to me, commodities were tanking and Nue tanked big time also. But, after I sold and realized my loss, a burning anger filled me and I said DAMN you Nue and shorted it again. (Actually i felt it had more downward potential). Get this it goes down like 20 cents and i had 20 puts, i sell and make 20 and it tanks 2 dollars. No kidding. I left 3K atleast on the table. now all this is happening at break neck pace. minutes literally. i see it go down and i buy calls on it, it goes down a little more, i buy more calls and then it rally's strongly and i make a lot of money. i also bought some RS at the lows and got in the rally. basically, i was all over the map early in the morning.
at about 11 am i decided to go to Murky's. Rest of the day it trended higher and i shorted BNI, MER and NFLX. I sold my LONG term play NCC for a $50 profit. I misplayed it, should have gone long stock and played for the bump. I sold my MER puts at the close, because it was rallying too hard. Bni and Nflx didn't give me a decent opportunity, so i am comfortable holding them for another day.
coffee makes me too jittery, i am switching to juices from now on. or i should. it's Miller time now and there are plenty of juicy leftovers in my fridge.

i make money

as i was telling my kurdish friend at Murky coffee, i was itching to make money. two days of financial celibacy were killing me. i concentrated and came through. good execution throughout the day, although i hope i was not over adventurous in buying 20 calls on STLD, towards the end. we shall see tomorrow.
crap, crap, crap...i just took a closer look at the pic above and realized i had sold NUE puts BOTH the times. i thought the first had been a buy. Good Lord !!! i am truly retarded, there go my profits, what a rookie mistake, fucking kurdish idiot, i knew i shouldn't have let him go on and on like that. Fuck !

not much happening 2

earnings season rolls on and i am still too scared to play anything much. i bought a bunch of Netflix (NFLX) because a 26% drop for such a good company is unwarranted. but, it's a bump play, hopefully i will be rid of this by Friday. as a long term buy it's not attractive at $30. my NCC play from yesterday, made some small change and i realized i had played it wrong. I should have bought stock, and it being at $6, i could have afforded it and got about 30/40 cents on it. oh well. DryShips (DRYS) is going all out for RIG. great play, i like that company a lot, so i'm gonna keep a tighter eye on it. Oil is insane. I looked at shorting it, but the options on USO were frightening. I am not sure i have enough expertise to play this field reliably, but i would love to short Oil.
that's all folks, at this rate Ramen is what i will be eating soon :0

not much happening

Third Friday of every month is options expiry for that month, which means the next week the option premium's are once again quite high. i.e. last week a 150 call on aapl, would be quite near aapl's real price, however, now that we have more time till May expiry those same calls will price $3-4 or even more for the extra time that you get.
well i had been playing so close to the money that i wanted to take it easy on this first day and just watch the tape. plus there was no real volatility. i tried to trade, but i am getting better now and i try not to force it. 2 other reasons were that this is earnings week and especially in these volatile times, that's doubly dangerous. i don't play earnings, things can move too much either way and you can lose big. that's gambling, i like things to be nice and quiet. do it the ninja assasin way.
that said, i did pick up some National City Corporation (NCC), Jan 2009 options. I was conflicted about this, but i was only staking $2K on it, and it was beat down 26% and hell they didn't even lose that much money + raised $7 billion, but the lollipop deal on that capital was very nice. Some good old Merrill boys got a chunk of that. 8% convertible at a price of $5. that's how the rich become richer. that was on top of slashing dividends to 1 cent. I'll put this one away in my vault along with my 2009 and 2010 Blockbuster (BBI) calls, bought May 2007, which are in the red by the way.
I was looking at some financials and i noticed that Wachovia (WB) had bounced back nicely. Remember, I had bought it last week at 25, May 2007 calls and sold it 2 days later for a 20 cent profit. Well, the next day it went up a dollar and another dollar the day after. I'm telling you Financials are at death's door, they really are very good bargains out there. Big banks are very stable and they are gonna mint coin some time in the future, probably sooner than later.

another good day

i saw the Google news yesterday, the market gapped up big, but i had thought it would be more choppy in the morning, well i was dreaming that...i woke up at 1pm and it was the perfect time to start my trading day. i looked around and aapl was too high, earnings next week Wed., but $7 rise was unwarranted. drop looked imminent and i swung in like Bond on bad guys. bim, bam, bap...little profits racked up. my bread and butter. although it was on options that expire today, so risky, but then i was trading the stock and the risk is the same that way. you gotta believe or you don't. the may options were a joke.
now to outback steakhouse for some moo moo....i'm a fat cat banker after all :)

excellent day

okay i exaggerated yesterday, i guess my positions were not so bad. but i really thought what with RS and NUE reporting earnings, i was in trouble. they are steel manufacturers so i was expecting blowout numbers. well, they did report great numbers, but for some reason, initially in the morning they were beaten down. maybe because of the US steel downgrade, or their forecast was not that good. all i know is i was up early and as soon as the bell rang, i sold all of RS and it was an insane sell, basically within 5 minutes, RS went from 60.5 to 62 and i sold at 61, a level it never even came close to for the rest of the day. I wonder what idiot bought my puts, he was probably cursing himself for the rest of the day. hahaha.
as usual i got excited at the sight of all the profits and sold both MON and BNI early. mon i didn't regret, that's a dicey stock, but i could have done better on BNI. i left more than 4K profit on MON and 700 on BNI. Bni i should have had, but whatever, sometimes the market moves so fast, you have no idea what's gonna happen. plus i didn't think earnings were that bad, i thought the day would be on the upside.
i had some repair people over to fix things, otherwise i would have gone back to bed. luckily, i saw that NUE had zoomed up too high too fast. here's what makes a good trader, i shorted it and it zoomed up even higher, now i'm down a buck or 1K, but i believed in my short and bought some more, right at the peak and at a great price $10. i did not sell at the best levels, i saw it breaking but i felt uneasy about my earlier buy, so sold that cheaply, but made good coin on my peak buy. left some on the table too.
all repairs were done and i went back to sleep. slept through closing and i didn't really miss much. all in all a good day.

im in a world of shit

so i took 2 days off and i come back and the market is up huge and i look at BNI and MON (monsanto) and i see the good news, upgrade and stock buyback respectively, but they seem overbought and i short them. later in the day it also looks like RS (reliance steel) is running up way too much, so i short it also. i completely missed all the high's on WB (wachovia), which all happen in the first 15 min's of the day and sell it for a dismal .20 cent/share profit. argh! i had planned to hold it for 2 weeks, but lost confidence/nerve in just 2 days.
then i happen to watch "fast money" on tv, it's on at 5pm and it's very very good, and it finally crystalizes why the market is up so much. all the earnings are good, traders are happy, there's no recession...further bad news for me, ibm great earnings, even worse news, i didn't realize NUE and RS are reporting tomorrow and they are sure to be good earnings and my RS puts are gonna get blown out, probably along with all my other positions, because, all together now, THE Mudder Fudging Earnings are ALL GOOD !!!
i still think we are setting up for a downtown, but we may not get it till Friday or till next week. Oil is way too high...but it doesn't matter, if all my current positions get blown out, i.e. i could have bought the same things for cheaper.
Pray for me and now to get full blown shitfaced (actually i was planning to do that anyway).

took the day off

took the day off. sold my bni puts for 6.2 for a $100 profit (just didn't care).

who cares a damn

it was one of those days when i just didn't care about the stock market...total absolute apathy. i forced myself to slog through it, but the spark wasn't there. i bought some Wachovia WB july calls, because the CEO has a good plan for this whole disaster. i actually wanted to buy more, but i don't have enough money to play both the short and the long side. financials are close to rock bottom though and long term they are the ABSOLUT best play. and no i'm not gonna add the "e" to the end of absolut, because language requires precision like love needs regulation. i also shorted BNI because i didn't like it at 94. inflation numbers tomorrow and God i don't care. gonna make myself some soup.

who's da man

as you may know i had a bunch of large put positions, about 80% of my net worth tied up and that's always a recipe for potential disaster. although believe me, i believed in my position very strongly. yes, screw sentence construction. and so last night i couldn't sleep. i kept reading the news...i set my alarm for 8:30am and i woke up by myself at 8am...that's how nervous i was. but, then i saw the numbers from General Electric (GE) and it was like sunshine. GE sucked big time (big surprise there NOT)...it's the 7th largest loan originator in the US people !!!
the sentiment report at 10am sucked even worse. market opened down big time, i sold my NUE puts too soon, but i felt i did good by IBM and RS. ofcourse, the market tanked big time later in the day, but hey what's our motto "don't be greedy" !!! let me explain, part of being a good trader, is not only knowing when to buy but also having sell levels. there is always coulda, woulda, shoulda, but my target for IBM was 117 and i sold there. that it went down later does not matter, it can just as easy go up. i held from yesterday, i took the risk, the sell levels were met. LIQUID !!!
who's ur daddy ? what, what :)

coffee, girls and nail biting

i woke just a little late, around 10am and it worked out for me, because the market went down in the morning and i was holding calls (i.e. i missed the drop). i was able to get rid of all my calls over the next hour for nice profits. you may be wondering why that's good, since the market went up the rest of the day, but i tell you for the life of me i don't know why we rallied. the news is just terrible and sometimes like today i like to take a stance and say enough with this NONSENSE, you should be down and by GOD you will go down.
so, i was looking for good candidates to short and what do i see IBM, godforsaken IBM, has run up 2 dollars to 119. as bugs bunny would say that's just preposterous !!! you may not know this, but IBM puts are my number one money maker. i have lost money very few times and made tons on IBM puts. can you say delicious. i bought some RS puts also for good measure.
now i was jonesing for coffee, actually i had been jonesing since 10am, but i am literally glued to my seat when i am in a market analysis mode...i checked for free wifi...and settled on Murky, yes that's the coffee shop's name. do they have good coffee ? yes. free and fast internet ? yes. tons of young girls, twirling their hair and staring into space? yes, yes. it's an interesting place, lots of people. i drove there, smoked cigarettes, met my friend Bill the bartender at Galaxy Hut, made friends with a crazy, old Iranian(?) guy, who was a stockbroker for 20 years or so he said. we swapped trade stories. oggled girls, didn't talk to any. more cigarettes. bought some NUE puts at market close. nothing crashed, so still holding a ton of puts.
then i went for pollo rico chicken, but the coffee had made me full, i gagged and stuffed myself, disgusting, went back and watched Elizabeth I...amazing...i nearly fell in love with old, haggard Cate Blanchett.
wish me luck and now i need beer.

so wish i had slept late

man o man, what a horrible day. for once i get up on time and i look at the market open and i decide to sell everything. my gut says hold, but my greedy butt says sell. i sell, i go back to sleep, because i rarely can tell what the hell is going to happen until it's afternoon. i wake up and i left massive amounts of profit on the table. both my positions died spectacularly (i had shorted them, so it's good, if i had held them). that's why i don't wake up early ;)
bni had very unusual action, just kept going down (see chart above). i think it's oil related, oil was flying and maybe they have exposure to diesel fuel for rail engines. i don't know. i left over 2K profit on bni and about 3K on RS. i had been shorting all along for precisely a day like this and i totally missed it.
i bought some bni, stld and sbux calls, hoping they will bump up tomorrow. god i hope so.

not on point

today's trading was mostly range bound, going up and down within a boundary. that's always hard to trade and i did not do a good job of it today. i could have sold most of my positions for small gains, but at the end of the day i am holding 3K shares of RS shorted and 1K shares of BNI shorted. RS i feel good about, but BNI could explode tomorrow. pray for me :)

slow day

as i smoked yet another cigarette at 5:30 in the morning, i thought 4 hours, that's more than enough isn't it. apparently not. the alarm went off at 9:15am and i promptly hit snooze. needless to say, i was a little miffed at myself when i woke up at 1pm. what kind of trader was i, where was the passion ?
i only had one position which was the short of RS and it seemed like i had missed it's low for the day. everything was going strong, but once again we were at the apex, things could either keep on going up or go down. i bet down, selected Mer, although later i realized financials were leading the charge. over the next hour, RS went down nicely to the point where i could break even or hold on. I still thought everything would go down further, even though i was not very sure and decided to hold. Mer was ok, because i already had a profit of 300 on it (unbanked), so i could wait, but RS was a gamble. luckily, it panned out as i had thought and i was able to sell both for good profits. In fact i left some on the table, but isn't that always the case (like most traders i over analyze my sells and groan if i sold it too early).
i felt drained for some reason and all i wanted to do was watch some tv. so i tuned into russell crowe exfoliating in the french countryside, there was the dog, the lackey, the cooking woman and ofcourse the easily seduced eye candy...and it's only 2:30pm :)

i screw around

i partied too much last night...oy vey !!! and so i did not get up out of bed until 11am. actually sometimes this trick works, because if it's low at 9:30 i am always tempted to sell, but this way it might go lower or higher and so i kinda arrive at the right time. but, if i am WORRIED about a stock, sleep is SO irrelevant.
but, today the trick did not work, even though unemployment was through the roof. very surprising i would not have expected the market to rally on that. i sold my rs for a small profit, but missed the low on bni and it went up by a point. this ofcourse only enraged me, since no way we are rallying huge on 5.1 unemployment. i shorted some more, went to bed, woke up at 2pm and lo and behold the top had been set in and bni was ready to die. i bought some more puts and also some on Stld, which was up 2 points + , yeah right. sold them all at the end, to end the friday on a good note. now i shall reward myself with some Cafe Asia food. Yay me !!!

big day

i should have posted this yesterday, but here goes. RIMM earnings came in very nicely and in after hours alone aapl saw a nice big bump. Kaching !! But, lately I have not been very bullish, so as soon as it hit 150, i sold it. maybe i should have sold half, ahhh fuck that. take profits when you can :) i was very happy, so i decided to go for some coffee. only problem is my favorite cafe Greenberry's, doesn't have internet access. so i just looked at the pretty girls.
at around 1:30pm i decided i should head back. the midday high should be setting in and i was all ready to short the crap out of everything. coffee does that to me. i have been tracking a new stock called BNI, it's that railway freight company buffett bought at 80. nice one old dude. anyway it was close to it's all time high of 96, so i shorted it. then i shorted some RS and later at the 3pm peak some IBM and aapl. i got some movement in rs and bni, but i decided to hold them overnight, since they are low risk and i thought the employment numbers would be bad. the aapl and ibm panned out very well, so i rewarded myself with beer :)

lazed around most of the day

i got scared there might be another strong(ish) rally in the morning, so i sold my aapl puts for a small profit and broke even on merrill (mer). aapl and mer did rally hard and then fall hard, which would have been the play of the day, but i missed it, because i just wasn't in the mood to watch the comp. i sat down toward the end, but couldn't see any plays, except to buy some aapl calls, hoping for good rimm earnings.

didn't think it would be so big

below (at bottom of post, click to enlarge) you can see my trades for today.
the sells in the beginning, i bought them yesterday, prices are below.
a. i bought the Aapl 135 calls yesterday for 11.35
b. i bought the Nue 60 calls yesterday for 7.2
c. i bought the Stld 27.5 calls yesterday for 6 and 6.1

i did not anticipate the day to be huge, so i sold aapl at the start. commodities were down, so nue and stld went down in the morning. i thought ibm might tank so bought some. then i went back to sleep. i woke up at 1pm and sold nue and stld straight away. my ibm puts were taking a beating, but i was hoping to catch some stocks at the peak and buy puts on them, especially ibm. i was able to do so with mer, but it did not falter at day's end. i built a huge position on ibm and very unexpectedly it went down $1.25 in the last 10 mins of the day. literally, i was sitting there, thinking i should lighten that position and it started going down and i just kept selling them at increments of .10 cents. It ended selling for around $8.7 towards the end, so i left some profit on the table there, but it was a very unexpected down trend on the stock, especially when aapl and others were flying, so i don't regret it. bought some aapl puts, since 149.5 is just sooooo high. tomorrow should go down in the morning and then maybe up, but you never know. today was a good day for trading, anytime you have such massive high's always a good time to short.